Monthly Archives: May 2008

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Here’s a funny one. It wasn’t exactly pistols at 30 paces, but police say a security company supervisor and a restaurateur
shot each other with Tasers in a “bonehead” confrontation over parking. Officers said neither man needed medical attention after the Saturday confrontation, but Harvey Epstein, co-owner of Mamacitas restaurant, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing and using a stun gun.

Ever wanted to know what it’s like to sit behind the wheel of a cop car during one of those high-speed chases they always show on the news? Or figure out how someone died by conducting their autopsy? If you’re headed to D.C., check out the new National Museum of Crime and Punishment. Here’s the Associated Press’ take:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Room by room, you search the house. Then, in a bedroom, a
brunette wearing a tank top points a gun at you. You fire — and a green dot flashes on her body. She falls to the ground.
This video firearms simulation is just one of the exhibits at the new National Museum of
Crime and Punishment that allows visitors to step into the shoes of those who enforce the
country’s laws.
The museum opens Friday, giving tourists the chance to perform an “autopsy” on a bruised dummy or drive a patrol car in a high-speed chase, among many exhibits.
“With most museums you walk and read and walk and read,” museum owner John Morgan said.
“Here you walk and read and you do, you do, you do. I think that’s what is going to
differentiate us from other attractions.”
Attracting tourists in Washington’s now crowded museum scene may prove to be a difficult task.
The crime museum, which charges about $18 for adults and $15 for children ages 5 to 11, is likely to face competition from several new entries, including the Newseum and the Madame Tussauds wax museum.
A somewhat similar National Law Enforcement Museum is expected to open nearby, and
officials there are closely watching the reception that the crime museum gets from
tourists.
And there is always the stalwart and admission-free Smithsonian museums, which may draw Americans cutting back on costly vacations as food and fuel prices spiral upward.
“I think there’s an uphill fight for a new museum opening charging that much money and
presuming to attract families,” said Douglas Frechtling, a tourism studies professor at
George Washington University.
“In D.C., it’s easy to substitute a free attraction for a paid attraction,” he said.
The crime museum boasts of a number of hands-on exhibits that it believes will draw the
crowds. Such interactivity is key for attracting families, Frechtling said.
“Look at the younger generations — they’re all experience-oriented,” Frechtling said. “If
it’s not interactive, I can’t see it’s going to appeal to them.”
Last week, crews were working on the museum’s exhibits and finishing the studio for
Fox “America’s Most Wanted.” The museum plans to have the studio open in
time, allowing visitors to periodically watch John Walsh host the show.
Morgan, who also owns WonderWorks amusement parks in Florida and Tennessee, said the idea for his newest creation came to him about five years ago, while visiting Alcatraz Island, the notorious former federal prison in San Fransisco Bay.
He wanted to tell the nation’s story of crime and punishment.
“We as Americans, we as people, have a deep, deep fascination with crime and punishment,” he said. “It’s the curiosity. It’s the unknown. It’s just behind the curtain.”
Morgan, who also runs an Orlando, Fla., law firm, financed the $21 million crime
museum.
The museum has exhibits, such as one on the colonial era that shows copies of drawings of harsh punishments, such as nailing a person’s ears for violating a moral code, and
biographies of today’s computer hackers and identity thieves.
In a crime prevention section, there are several tips on how to stay safe and report
crimes. Parents can have their children’s fingerprints copied at the museum and then
provide them to authorities if their kids go missing.
There’s also a punishment section, which includes a place where visitors can pretend to go through the booking process, mug shot and all. They can stand in the museum’s jail cell with a bunk bed and metal toilet.
Morgan said he isn’t glorifying crime.
“I think people who come through this attraction will get that at the end of the day you
need to be responsible for your actions, there are consequences to your actions, and that crime does not pay,” he said.

For more info on the museum, check out http://crimemuseum.org/index.html.

A parolee wielding a semiautomatic rifle walked into a church festival filled with children Saturday morning and opened fire, wounding the mother of his child and two bystanders and shattering this normally quiet suburban neighborhood. Police said Fernando Diaz Jr., 33, of North Hollywood, walked into the festival at St. John Baptist de la Salle Church, kissed his son, pulled the rifle out of a tennis bag and fired several rounds at his ex-girlfriend and festival volunteers before school parents tackled him to the ground.

A Superior Court judge on Monday upheld the murder charge against Ara Grigoryan, the man charged in the July 2007 hit-and-run death of Elizabeth Sandoval. Grigoryan’s defense team had sought to reduce the murder charge before going to trial, arguing that prosecutors made certain assumptions about the incident and had overblown the 20-year-old’s prior driving infractions to infer a “wanton disregard” for human life — a key finding for murder.

LAPD Detective Bill Longacre got the tip in December 2005: Someone had rented a storage locker and filled it with stolen guns and jewelry.

When he opened the locker, he found a bag mixed with family heirlooms and other valuables taken from across Los Angeles County. And he discovered photos and copies of a visa, all with the same name – Ignacio Del Pe a Rio.

Showing the photos to the clerk and manager of the storage facility, Longacre discovered that the man was the same one who had rented the locker.

Over the next two months, Longacre used a database that matches suspect descriptions, and he came up with a few matches for Rio, who turned out to have 35 aliases and whose real name was Roberto Caveda. Quickly, he realized he had a big case on his hands.

As Longacre closed in, Caveda made a crucial mistake on Feb. 16, 2006 – when he was caught during a burglary in Sherman Oaks.

The arrest capped a spree in which Caveda admitted to burglarizing more than 1,000 homes in two years and led police to $16 million in recovered property, some buried near the 118 Freeway in Granada Hills.

Partly because of his work on that case, Longacre, 61, was honored Thursday with the 2008 Robert Presley Institute of Criminal Investigation Investigative Excellence Award.

That’s Longacre in the photo above. I interviewed him in the third floor interview room at Parker Center, the same room Charles Manson was interrogated in the 60s and later O.J. Simpson. Behind the air conditioning gauge in the room the department had a video camera set up to record confessions back in the day.

Update: Video footage of suspect and his vehicle available for download at www.lapdonline.org-”Solve a Crime” Navigation bar on home page

Los Angeles Police Department have released a sketch of a man who attempted to sexually assault two young girls in separate incidents.

The first assault occurred on April 30, 2008, at around 7:30 a.m., when a Latino man approached an 8-year-old girl walking in the 600 block of Burlington Avenue. The man lured the girl into a secluded area of an apartment building located at 625 South Burlington Avenue and attempted to sexually assault her.

On February 29, 2008, at 9:00 a.m., the same suspect approached a 9-year-old girl walking near James M. Wood Boulevard and Hoover Street. The suspect initiated a conversation with the girl and pulled her into an apartment building where he attempted to sexually assault her.

The suspect is described as Hispanic, 25-30 years of age with black spiked hair. He’s about 5 feet six inches tall and weigh 170 pounds. He was last seen driving a blue unknown make and model vehicle. A composite sketch of the suspect is available through Media Relations Section.

Anyone with information is asked to call Rampart Sexual Assault Detective Sofie Toledo at (213) 207-2031 or Robbery Homicide Detective John Wong at (213) 485-2921. After hours and on weekends, please call the 24-hour Detective Information Desk at 1-877-LAW-FULL (529-3855).

July 10, 1901
Craiton, H.R., Emp. 2nd hand store, So Main St. – Returning from visit to his girl, 2 this a.m.,; front of Horace Bell’s place Figueroa St., was shot at from ambush, behind shrubbery.

July 10
Compfort, L.B., Driver of milk wagon – Shot in back, while on his wagon, 21st & Toberman, abt. 3 this a.m. Taken to Cal. Hospital, 4:30 a.m.

July 14
Macchiaroli, Cano, 829 Yale St. – Shot at 8 this a.m., West Glendale by Antonio Pellegrine, living at 729 Castellar.

Aug. 21
Bachelors, Body of man, to’t to be Bachelors, found in Westlake. Kelly and Quinn.

Sept. 3
Rasche, Fred, Foreman, baker, Ebingers Bakery, 3d and Spring St. – At or near 9th and Wall St., 3:30 this a.m. on way home from work, shot in right side (flesh wound). Was a non-union man. Susp. Stevan Faviamovich, union baker, arrested by Sergeant Williams.

Nov. 19
Wilcox, Abram P., wife and child – Found murdered in their ranch house near Downey; probably killed night of 16th inst.

Dec. 19
Neilson, Carl, Chatsworth Park Tunnel – Held up by three men, just above S.P. yds., this evening, and compelled to lie down while they committed sodomy on him. Says his companion, W. McGrew was with him. (Captain Hensley).

Dec. 3
Sampson, John – Shot and killed his wife at 4th and Spring St. on sidewalk, this p.m. Immediately arrested by crossing officer O.T. Walker.

Feb. 19, 1902
Wiley, Mrs. H.S. – Shot at her rooming house, (about noon) At The Columbia, 512 So. Broadway by D.C. Kent. He shot her twice in right side and once in left arm, then shot himself in forehead, only making a flesh wound; then cut throat with razor. Kent was her partner in lodging house (and lover). Kent committed suicide by taking carbolic acid in receiving hospital on March 12, 1902.

Wong Ung Wong – Murdered, about 1 this a.m., at Simons Brick Yard, 825 Boyle Ave. by On Ling Sing, who was arrested in San Francisco April 4th, and returned to Los Angeles by Hawley. Hawley, Auble, Steele & Kelly on case.

This was a pretty brazen, daylight shooting in a well-traveled area. So not surprisingly, police say there were a lot of witnesses to this shooting. If anyone has any information to share, please give me a call: (818) 713-3699.

ENCINO – A shooting on Ventura Boulevard this afternoon launched police on a manhunt for the gunman and prompted officials at a nearby private school to lock down the campus.

One man was hit in the shooting, just after noon, and taken to a local hospital, said Los Angeles Police spokesman Richard French. The victim’s condition and identity were not immediately available. The shooter, described only as a Latino man, fled the scene in the 17600 block of Ventura Boulevard, near White Oak Avenue.

A couple of blocks away, Crespi Carmelite High School shut down, keeping its students and faculty members in locked rooms on campus, said Brian Banducci, dean of students.

“The school is closed at this point. No one comes in or out,” Banducci said. “(Police) have K-9s in the area. … We’re actually on the western perimeter of the area they’re containing right now.”

He said the school will remain locked down until the LAPD tells them it’s safe. At most, Banducci said, the school sees one or two precautionary lock-downs a year.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn has been taking a lot of heat for a Fox news report that alleged she funded some dubious gang intervention workers but our sister paper, the Daily Breeze, calls the allegations flawed.
The report largely based on two cops comes as Hahn, who represents some of the most violent areas of the city, is pushing a $30 million anti-gang tax measure on November’s ballot. The parcel tax which would cost about $30 or $40 a household would pay for intervention and prevention but political insiders have been yammering that this report could damage the ballot’s prospects.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn continues to take fire from talk radio hosts and conservative bloggers, two weeks after a television news report accused her of providing city funds to active gang members under the auspices of gang intervention programs.

But a review of the Fox 11 News story found major flaws that undermine its central allegations. Most notably, records and interviews show that the gang intervention workers identified in the report have not received city funding. Additionally, a convicted rapist was wrongly identified as a gang intervention worker, and Hahn was mistakenly accused of providing funds directly to gang workers.

The story was largely based on the allegations of two Los Angeles Police Department officers who contend that Hahn pressured the department to remove them from their foot beats in Watts due to complaints about their aggressive tactics.

The conflict between Hahn and the two officers – Ryan Moreno and Chuck Garcia – dates to late 2005, when she responded to a spate of violence in Watts by starting a gang task force.